Free Choice Manifesto
The free choice manifesto expresses first of all the universal notion what we call consciousness is equivalent to unpredictable free choice. Furthermore, the free choice manifesto states that everyone is oppressed in one way or another and unpredictable free choice is at the root of all oppression. In interactions with others, someone is the oppressor of an oppressed person in one or more very many different ways. If you voice a disagreement with someone, you become an oppressor and if someone expresses disagreement with you, they oppress you. If you shame someone, you are an oppressor and if you feel shame, someone oppresses. If you are selfish, you oppress socially responsible people and if you are socially responsible, you are likewise oppress selfish people. In other words, oppression of others sometimes results in desirable outcomes just as others oppressing you might also be desirable. Bosses oppress their workers but that work creates wealth and profit and social responsibility and so is desirable. Sick people are a burden on others and oppress those who are otherwise well, but taking on that burden is socially responsible and therefore desirable.
The history of civilization is all about oppression, but also about the emergence of free choice from the harsh misery of oppression by coerced choice. Instead of viewing civilization history as driven mainly by oppressor and oppressed, civilization is actually driven mainly by the emergence of free choice despite oppression. It is free choice that naturally brings wealth and prosperity despite some oppression from free choice. Instead of the tyranny of coerced choice from oppression, free choice gives equal opportunity and yet free choice must tolerate some unequal outcomes as a result. In the not too distant past, unequal outcomes often meant death since there were so many bad things that happened to people all of the time as a result of oppression.
Inequality is part of the human condition and yet a civilization can and does choose to enforce equality of opportunity. Equality of opportunity is part of the free choice manifesto but some inequality of outcome is also a part of the free choice manifesto. The free choice manifesto also means that people are free to say and write what they feel, but there are limitations on such free speech. Likewise free choice also means that commerce is open to new products and markets, but there are also limitations on such free free markets.
Free choice by its very nature depends more on individual freedom more than government control, but free choice allows for less individual freedom and some limited government control. After all, free choice is ultimately all about the selfish emotion dimension as well as the compassion dimension of a social responsibility.
Allure of the Social Responsibility of Marx's Manifesto
Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels published the Communist Manifesto in 1848, which established a plan for an
inevitable global communism, the ultimate compassion of social responsibility. The manifesto did not even mention the failure of the very first communism of the first Paris Commune of 1792 or why that first communism failed so badly. In fact, every subsequent experiment with the Manifesto social responsibility has also failed, but the Manifesto allure returns once again. In these times of majority wealth, the wealthy majority vilifies a selfish elite minority instead of the wealthy majority. After the second Paris Commune in 1871, Marx and Engels added an appendix to the Manifesto praising the goals of the second Paris Commune, which they considered to be an incomplete communism with the Manifesto plan, but still did not mention the failure of the first communism. The Manifesto never did mention the failure of the first Paris commune but argued that all the second Paris Commune needed was to have taken over the military and vilify and eliminate the elite wealthy minority. After all, the military at the behest of the wealthy elite ended the second Paris commune.
The current Manifesto allure of class warfare once again shows up in our politics. Politicians once again decry inequality of both opportunity and outcome and call for all out class warfare between an oppressed majority and an oppressor minority as the root of all misery and injustice. The Manifesto states that profit and wealth do not belong not to the minority wealthy. The manifesto argues that all wealth belongs to the government and not to the minority who earn that wealth and the government should redistribute that wealth
equally to all consumers and workers.
The Manifesto further argues that once an all powerful government removes the incentives of wealth inequality, everyone will somehow benefit from the lack of wealth incentives. However, while the Manifesto discusses at some length the corruption of wealth and profit, the Manifesto does not discuss the undeniable corruption of big government. In fact, the Manifesto never mentions anything about human nature and the large natural variation in human abilities and competencies. Human nature can and does after all corrupt any human enterprise and in fact, social responsibility can corrupt just as much as selfishness. The incentives of selfishness over profit and wealth provide incentives for innovation and innovation and incentives are the key to economic growth as well as the creation of new wealth and social responsibility. In a consumer economy, economic growth is due to both population growth as well as to innovation and an economy with zero population growth must have innovation to grow.
The Manifesto argues that profit and wealth inevitably corrupt the elite minority at the expense of the majority workers and consumers. However, the Manifesto does not ever mention the likewise inevitable corruption of big government, which is an elite minority in power, by the same profit and wealth from the majority workers and consumers. The Manifesto plan in fact resulted in corrupt governments and gave Russia Stalin, China Mao, Vietnam Ho Chi Minh, Cuba Castro, Cambodia Pol Pot, and Venezuela Chavez. In every case, the tyranny of corrupt big government enforced a kind of socially responsible economic equality at the expense of any selfish individual free choice.
George Orwell's Animal Farm in 1945 painted a very bleak portrait of Stalin's Russia but Orwell still supported the Manifesto socialism his whole life. Orwell still believed in the Manifesto even though his later work
Nineteen-Eighty-Four in 1949 further showed his disdain for totalitarianism. Despite the ever growing number of totalitarians in modern China that result from the Manifesto plan, government corruption turns out to be by far even more insidious and pernicious than elite corruption. This is because big governments always claim the virtue and morality of social responsibility and essentially eliminate any opposition by incarceration or death.
Inequality is part of human nature and so there is no such thing as an equal outcome economy without corruption...there are only better or worse economies with equal opportunity, but never equal outcomes. In fact, a healthy economy must tolerate a certain amount of inequality in order to allow individual free choice, which is essential for innovation and change. Unfortunately, free choice also means that people are free to make poorer choices as well as better choices, but that is the nature of the Free Choice Manifesto.
